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Han’s rescue — what, exactly, was the plan?

StorySmack Episode #34

THE LAST JEDI has come under fire for nonsensical plot elements and characters making LOST-esque idiotic decisions, but if we jump in the WayBack Machine™ and take a look at RETURN OF THE JEDI, we find that nonsensical might be endemic to all STAR WARS movies — read also, if there was a “plan” to rescue Han, what the hell was it, and how did it go so wrong?

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I think the mistake is trying to make it LUKE’S plan. Goddamn white boys stealing all the credit, all the time, Lando is the inside man, and the brains of this operation.

Plan A: Luke stays home. Have you SEEN him fight with a lightsaber? Mark Hamill plays Luke with all the swordfighting skills of a boy trained by an old man and a drawf in a swamp. Instead, the plan calls for Luke to be a Big Scary Jedi and send his droids in. Jabba takes the droids, and later Lando steals the droids back and escapes. Easy. Except Jabba is greedy! Threepio has been told nothing of any plan, and R2D2, fresh from hacking the Death Star, is sent in to pwn Jabba’s computers.

Plan B Leia brings in Chewie. She escapes at night with Han and a ton of Jabba’s money. Lando escapes with Chewie and the Droids. Remember that the last we saw Chewie and Lando, they were flying away in the Falcon to find Han, so they had time to come up with this plan. Also, if Chewie decided that a major part of the plan was sacrificing his life to save Han, nobody was going to talk Chewie out of it and keep both their arms in their sockets.

Except Leia can’t keep her helmet on, and has to kissyface Han. She’s caught. I do agree the whole “let’s hide all night behind the curtain” was probably a hard sell for Jabba…

Plan C Luke comes in and pulls a bunch of Sith moves by dressing in black and doing mind tricks and force choking the piggy guards. He’s trying to be super spooky, but Jabba is unimpressed. Jabba throws him in with the Rancor. Luke uses the Jedi Power to move rocks and kills the Rancor. Jabba sends them to the Sarlacc pit, his old favorite method of execution.

Out here on the sail barge, Luke wasn’t telling Lando to act, he was getting a signal from Lando to do some sweet flipz and get all the guards’ attention. Luke signals for R2 to launch his NEW, UNTESTED lightsaber into the air. The last we saw of Luke, he was getting a robot hand and had lost the blue lightsaber into a gas giant.

Chewie helps Han, Lando secures the transportation, and Leia rescues herself. By the time Luke has swung over to help her, she’s already strangled Jabba with his own pervert chain and looking for the keys. R2 rescues the droids, and they all fly off to Mos Eisley to go home.

Luke is not a master trickster: That’s Lando, Luke can’t figure out how to lie to his uncle and go to Tashi Station for the Power Converters. Luke can’t hide Leia from the Emperor, and nearly loses everything because of it! The only reason people want it to be Luke’s plan is because Luke comes with a shiny “hero protagonist” tag that he stole from Mr. J. Campbell.